In the Balance
by ohmygoodnessnotanotherone
Summary: It's dark and cold and Spinelli's running for his life, but it's more than just his own life that's hanging in the balance. If he doesn't run, Stone Cold will die, and this time, this time he'll stay dead.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and no profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through the writing of this work.

**A/N:** Written for Suerum's birthday. Thank you for being such a good friend.

**A/N 2:** Some of the imagery might be a little disturbing. This story is AU, and doesn't take the current happenings on the show into consideration. Is meant to be brotherly love in nature.

* * *

**Part I.**

Spinelli struggled to put one foot in front of the other. He was cold and tired and hungry, not to mention thirsty, but he had to keep walking. If he didn't, then Stone Cold would die, and this time, for real.

He'd been walking for what felt like days, due to his less than stellar condition, but in reality had only been a few hours filled with anxiety over how Stone Cold was faring, and whether or not he would be caught. Hours that had blended into each other and left him weaker and completely bone-weary.

"Just a few more miles," he said, pushing the words through cracked lips. It was good to hear the words spoken aloud, though Spinelli wished for company other than himself, and his voice, like the rest of him was dry and weak.

He had no real idea of how many more miles it would be before he found some sign of civilization and was spurred on solely by Stone Cold's words_: Run, Spinelli. Run and find somewhere safe._ Not, _Get help_, _Spinelli_, but, _Run_.

For the longest time, it had been just him and Stone Cold locked in a small cell that was too hot and bright during the day and too cold and dark at night, by a madman whose idea of revenge on the Quartermaines was sick and twisted.

Their captor - some enemy of the Quartermaines, he hadn't really given them his name, and he always wore a mask when he 'visited' them - fed them very little and didn't provide much by the way of amenities.

They were being held in a cement room that boasted of a boarded up window. Stone Cold and Spinelli had taken turns working the boards loose, which is how Spinelli had finally gotten free; only he could fit through the small window.

They had been provided with a bucket and a roll of toilet paper. There was no bed, no sink, nothing of comfort.

It was a truly desolate place, and at night, Spinelli and Stone Cold would share the only thing that they could - their body heat, and stories. It was the only comfort they got.

During the day, their masked captor would visit and take some pictures of them - proof of life. He'd wrongly assumed that Spinelli was a blood relative of Stone Cold's, his son or nephew, and hadn't listened to Stone Cold's claims that Spinelli was nothing to him.

His mentor's words had stung, at first, but Spinelli knew that Stone Cold had said them to protect him. It hadn't worked, and Stone Cold had stopped speaking to their captor at all.

During his visits, he'd throw a bottle of water, or two, their way, and maybe a sandwich for them to share. Sometimes they'd get a piece of fruit, or a bag of chips.

Sometimes, though, their jailer would have one of his henchmen (also masked) take one of them out of the cell to another room to endure some type of torture. The tortures varied, and always wreaked havoc on the mind of the one who'd been left behind, sometimes for what felt like days.

Once, Spinelli'd been locked in a box, not unlike a coffin, and spiders had been fed in through a small hole at the top of the box, which had been placed just above his nose.

He'd truly lost track of time then. Had panicked, heart thundering nearly clear through his chest. There'd been spiders in his nose, his ears, beneath his worn clothing. They knew no boundaries, and when he screamed, they'd crawled into his mouth, leaving a bitter, acrid taste behind.

He could feel the spiders crawling on him for days afterward, even though he'd been tossed into a tub of ice cold water afterward, and the spiders that had not scurried off of him when he'd been retrieved from the box had died. Spinelli had no idea how long he'd screamed, but his throat had been raw and his voice hadn't worked when he'd been returned to the cell, shivering so hard that his teeth chattered.

It had been the worst form of torture that Spinelli had thus far endured. Beatings and the mental games that his captor had played were as nothing compared to that.

Stone Cold hadn't asked questions. He'd wrapped himself around Spinelli and just held him until the shivering subsided and he found his voice again.

Though Spinelli and Stone Cold had been plunged into a metaphorical darkness so deep that Spinelli couldn't see a way out, it had been okay because he hadn't been alone in that darkness. He'd had Stone Cold.

Now, though, he had no one, just himself and a long, lonely road for company. His right ankle was sprained, maybe broken, due to his jump from the high window of his and Stone Cold's cell.

It was hard for him to walk. Every step was painful, but he gritted his teeth, knowing that, because he'd managed to escape, Stone Cold was suffering at the hands of their captor, maybe, even now, being tortured.

If he didn't find a way out of these never-ending woods, soon, he ran the risk of being found by the man who'd taken them, or one of the Seriously Disturbed One's (as Spinelli had taken to thinking of the man) lackeys. Spinelli doubted he'd survive the Seriously Disturbed One's retribution for a failed escape. Doubted that the man who'd starved, beaten and tortured him and Stone Cold by turns would tolerate a bold attempt at self-liberation on his part.

He had no idea of how much time had passed since he and Stone Cold had been taken from Stone Cold's new residence by gunpoint. It could have been days, or weeks. He doubted that it had been months - they would've starved to death or succumbed to their injuries by then.

He remembered only that it was a Saturday when they'd been taken. His birthday, to be exact.

It hadn't been much of a celebration anyway. Not even a cake. No presents.

Everyone had forgotten about it, including Stone Cold. He'd swallowed his bitter disappointment over his mentor's unintentional slight with a bag of barbecue chips that he'd washed down with a bottle of orange soda, mock-toasting with his shadow.

By the end of the evening, his bust of a birthday had been the last thing on his mind, because he'd been pressing shaky fingers to a gunshot wound in Stone Cold's side. Stone Cold had, perhaps a bit foolishly, rushed their abductor and had suffered the consequences of his foolhardiness very swiftly.

It was just a flesh wound, but it had bled a lot, and Spinelli could tell that Stone Cold was in pain, though he tried to mask it. Sometimes Stone Cold was too stoic for his own good. Spinelli had been beside himself with worry, but Stone Cold had talked him through applying pressure and then binding the injury with part of the man's torn tee-shirt. It wasn't ideal, but it had held well enough, and then their captor had dressed the wound himself, when they'd arrived at their 'jail' – a castle-like house in the middle of nowhere.

The injury had since become infected, and heat poured off of Stone Cold like a furnace.

Spinelli knew that Stone Cold's condition would only grow worse the longer he was held in that dank cell. Though Stone Cold had told him to run, to leave him behind and not look back, Spinelli was marking his trail, turning a branch down here, and scraping some bark off of a tree there, because he fully intended to return to Stone Cold, with help. He wasn't going to leave his mentor behind to die.

"Don't stop moving," Spinelli said, leaning against a tree for support, feeling winded and dizzy.

"Gotta keep going." Spinelli shoved off of the tree, swayed on his feet and then crashed into the undergrowth. He rolled onto his back and blinked up at the canopy that the branches of the trees made. The foliage was dense, and little of the moon's light trickled through.

He sat up, a little too quickly, and had to hold his head for fear that it would fall off because he was so dizzy. It ached a little too, probably because the last time he'd any water had been maybe a day ago.

He'd lost track of things like that, too. It hadn't mattered, because it was out of his and Stone Cold's control. They lived, ate and drank at the whim of the man in the mask.

They'd begun to measure the passage of time by how many times they'd been given water - a total of fourteen, after they'd started counting. Which meant that they could've been held anywhere along the scale from fourteen to forty-two days.

That didn't matter either. The only thing that mattered was that Spinelli got back on his feet and made it out of the woods and brought someone back to rescue Stone Cold. Nothing less than that was acceptable. Less than that meant certain death for the both of them.

"C'mon Jackal, you've had a brief repast, time to get up and begin anon. Up and at 'em," Spinelli encouraged himself, whispering the words.

There was a stitch in his side and his ankle was throbbing, but he had no choice. He had to get up. If he didn't, Stone Cold's life was forfeit.

"That's it," Spinelli said, grimacing when he managed to get upright once again, using a nearby tree for support.

He took a deep breath that made his side feel like it was on fire and held his breath until the pain subsided. He pushed off the tree and reached for another.

Ping-ponging from one tree to another, Spinelli made his way through the forest. It was slow and painful going, and Spinelli nearly wound up flat on his face time and time again, but thoughts of Stone Cold sitting alone in that cell kept him going, made him more sure-footed than he'd have been if it had been only his welfare hanging in the balance.

"Hang in there, Stone Cold, the Jackal will not disappoint. He will give up his own life before that," Spinelli said, the words barely audible.

His body was failing him. Long gone was the adrenaline which had seen him through his first leg of the journey toward freedom, and now his spirit was dwindling down to nothing. His will to live had been carved away at by the Seriously Disturbed One, and now, thoughts of Stone Cold being tortured because Spinelli had been discovered missing, made it almost impossible for Spinelli to move forward.

Guilt tore at his insides and made him double over, torn palm pressed flat against a tree. He heaved, spitting up what was no doubt the lining of his stomach - a dark yellow ball of snot-like substance. His stomach burned, and still he kept heaving over and over again until it felt like there was nothing left of his stomach that wasn't on the floor of the forest.

He sank to his knees, rested his forehead against the rough bark of the tree and concentrated on the, typically instinctual, act of breathing. His lungs hurt.

Hell, every part of him seemed to hurt, but he had to press on. He couldn't fail now. He couldn't fail Stone Cold. He had to keep moving.

Crawling forward on his hands and knees, Spinelli kept going. His arms shook beneath his weight, in spite of how much of it he'd lost while he'd been held captive. His clothes hung off of him now. They hadn't exactly been tight before the enforced diet, but it felt like they were two sizes, maybe three, too big now. Stone Cold was the same; his own skintight clothes had become loose on his thinning frame. They were, in effect, starving to death, slowly, and purposefully.

When he saw moonlight, bare, blanketing a surface that was no longer rough, Spinelli thought he was seeing a mirage, and blinked, expecting it to disappear. It didn't. He continued crawling, even when twigs and rocks no longer dug into, and tore at his palms and knees, and it was clear that he'd finally, after countless hours, reached a road.

The sky was beginning to grow lighter, and Spinelli knew that dawn was approaching, though he couldn't, for the life of him understand what that was supposed to mean. His mind had simply stopped working, and still, he crawled, his body acting of its own accord, independently of his mind which had ceased to function the way that it was supposed to.

Right hand, left hand, right knee, left knee. Right hand, left hand, right knee, left knee. Shuffle.

_Move. _

_Move._

_Move._

_Don't stop. _

_Don't give up._

_Keep going._

_Run, Spinelli. Don't look back._

Stone Cold's voice, loud and crystal clear, kept spurring him onward when his body was well past the quitting point.

The sight of twin lights, bright and bearing down on him didn't faze him. He kept moving, Stone Cold's voice whispering in his ear, pleading with him not to give up, to keep going. The consequences for not moving were far too great.

Screeching, loud and jarring caused him to stop, arms buckling beneath him, and knees giving out. He lay, sprawled out on the asphalt, and still, he tried to keep going, inching forward on his belly.

"Shoot, hey, you okay, sir?" a voice asked, and Spinelli started a little, because it wasn't Stone Cold's.

He relaxed a little when he realized that it wasn't that of the Seriously Disturbed One, or any of his men either. It was a familiar voice though. A voice that Spinelli knew he should be able to put a name to, but, for some reason, couldn't.

The owner of the voice knelt down beside Spinelli, cutting off some of the brightness of the lights that were blinding him. Before he could move, not that he could, his body was failing him, much as his mind had, the man reached out and touched him, raised Spinelli's head from the pavement.

There was a sharp intake of air, followed by a shocked exclamation of wonder, "Spinelli?"

Spinelli licked his lips, wanting to speak, but his mouth was too dry, his tongue not even wet enough to moisten his lips. Instead, he narrowed his eyes, peering up into a face that was hidden in shadow.

"Spinelli, oh god, you've been missing for a month," the voice said. "I've got to get you to a hospital. Shit, what happened? Is Morgan with you?"

Spinelli managed to shake his head, and turn it to the side, facing the woods that he'd escaped. He turned back to the man that he didn't yet recognize, and tried to communicate the danger that Stone Cold was in, that they needed to go back and find him, that they couldn't leave until Stone Cold was safe as well.

"He's in the woods?" the voice asked. The stranger, who wasn't a stranger, was lifting Spinelli, carefully, stilling when Spinelli hissed in pain.

"Okay, Spinelli, I'm going to get you out of here," the voice said.

Spinelli, mustering every bit of strength that he had left, which wasn't much, fisted the man's shirt in his hand and shook his head. He pursed his lips and pointed toward the woods with a finger that he could barely lift.

"Spinelli, I need to get you to the hospital, and then I'll come back for Morgan, I promise," the voice said.

Sensing a losing battle, Spinelli closed his eyes and bit his tongue. He'd failed Stone Cold.

"What the hell happened to you anyway? You hardly weigh anything," the voice murmured, and Spinelli felt movement, heard the sound of a heartbeat, that wasn't Stone Cold's, next to his right ear.

He was being held, like Stone Cold had held him in the cell, except this was different. He was being lifted and moved, and placed into what he assumed was the backseat of a car.

"I promise you, Spinelli, I'll come back for Morgan, just as soon as I make sure you're okay. If I don't do that, Morgan will kill me," the voice said, and then Spinelli recognized who the voice belonged to. It was Milo. Milo had found him.

"Max and I will comb the woods until we find Morgan and bring him back to Port Charles," Milo babbled as he put the car into gear and sped off in the opposite direction that he'd been heading in.

Spinelli soon found it difficult to hang on, in spite of Stone Cold's voice encouraging him to keep going. He lost the battle to remain conscious, his last conscious thought that of Stone Cold wasting away to nothing, skeletal thin, accusing blue eyes boring into his.

* * *

**Part II.**

When he started to regain consciousness, Spinelli was convinced that there were a million spiders crawling on him, that he was locked in the box, separated from Stone Cold. Alone. The walls closing in on him. The spiders crawling inside of him.

He screamed and tore at the spiders that were in his eyes and hair, those that had worked their way into his nostrils and were trying to eat away his brain.

He screamed, the sound reverberating in his ears, because it had nowhere else to go. No one to hear who would care that he was terrified and hurting.

He fought against the hands that grabbed his wrists, pulled them down to his sides.

He thrashed and yelled until his throat hurt. He tried to free himself, certain that it was the hands of his tormentors introducing him to a new torture.

"Spinelli, open your eyes, goddamn it," the owner of the hands said. "Stop fighting me, Spinelli. Please."

Spinelli's eyes snapped open at the quietly spoken, please. It wasn't something that the Seriously Disturbed One or his men would say.

"It's okay, now."

It was Stone Cold.

Spinelli stopped fighting his mentor, and Stone Cold let go of his wrists, though he gripped one of Spinelli's hands and held it. Spinelli licked his lips and was surprised when someone placed a straw to them. Puzzled, he drank when Stone Cold nodded that it was okay.

"Wha –? Spinelli's voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

"You saved us," Stone Cold said, his voice filled with pride and awe; his eyes filled with something very much like love. "You flagged Milo down on the road. He got a group together and they found Darius Magnam's hideaway, found me."

"How long?" Spinelli managed after another sip of water. It hurt to talk. His throat felt like he'd swallowed broken glass.

"A week, you've been unconscious for a week. The doctors said that it wasn't a coma," Stone Cold explained, brushing a stray hair from Spinelli's face. "You saved us, Spinelli."

Spinelli blinked, finally taking in his surroundings, and realizing that he wasn't in the cell anymore, and that the monster, the man in the mask, the Seriously Disturbed One, finally had a name – Darius Magnam. He shivered and took a look around the room. It was an ordinary hospital room, complete with a second bed, IVs, and heart monitors that were steadily monitoring the hearts of the two men - himself and Stone Cold – that they were respectively attached to.

Stone Cold was dressed in a hospital gown. There were bandages wound around his head. He had one around his wrist, and bandages on his face and arms. His skin no longer looked pale and sickly. He no longer looked, or felt, feverish.

"We're in the hospital," Stone Cold said. "We should be able to get out tomorrow – "

There was a loud cough from behind Stone Cold that startled Spinelli. Stone Cold closed his eyes. He groaned and placed his forehead against the metal railing of Spinelli's bed.

"That's _if_ your labs come back okay," Monica said. She approached the two of them, smiling down at Spinelli.

"_Someone _was supposed to call me when you woke up. It's good to have you back with us, Spinelli. Thank you for what you did for my son."

She pressed a kiss to his forehead, and Spinelli felt himself blushing. She gave her wayward son an irritated look that quickly turned into one of love and relief.

"But I..." Spinelli said, frowning, trying to remember exactly what had happened. He didn't remember flagging Milo down. Didn't remember telling him about Stone Cold being locked in a cell. Didn't remember any of it.

"You should rest your voice," Monica said, patting the hand that Stone Cold had not yet relinquished.

"You've suffered damage your vocal cords. It will take a couple of weeks for them to heal," she explained, keeping her voice low and soothing.

Spinelli nodded, darting his eyes to Stone Cold who gave him a small, encouraging smile.

"Now, if your labs do come back fine, then you will be released, at the earliest, tomorrow," Monica said, clearing her throat and turning her attention to Stone Cold.

When Stone Cold opened his mouth, his mother held up a finger and he clamped his mouth shut.

"And, provided that Spinelli has somewhere to go, so that he's not on his own, he should be able to leave tomorrow as well. Again, only _if _his labs come back clean," Monica said, her lips in a firm line.

"Spinelli can stay with me," Stone Cold said, looking to Spinelli for confirmation, thumb running along the outer edge of Spinelli's hand. "If you want to, that is."

Spinelli nodded, and felt a weight lift off of his chest that he hadn't realized had been there. He'd recently relocated to Port Charles, after his failed marriage, and had been living out of his suitcase in a hotel room. He'd been visiting Stone Cold on his birthday night, only because the man had invited him over to ask him a couple of questions about stock investments.

Spinelli smiled, squeezed Stone Cold's hand when Stone Cold tightened his grip. He couldn't imagine going anywhere else, and didn't want to be alone. Ever again.

"Now," Monica said, clearly intending to change the topic.

She peered closely at the clipboard in her hand and then gave Spinelli a scrutinizing look. He held his breath when she frowned at Stone Cold and then gave her son a piercing look.

"It seems to me that, according to the information here, you were_ abducted_..." Monica faltered on the word abducted and pressed her hand to her mouth before breathing deeply and continuing with a much stronger voice, and a slight smile affixed to her lips.

"On your birthday, Spinelli. Which means –"

She held her hand up when Spinelli opened his mouth and motioned for him to close it. Reluctantly, he did.

"Which means that you never got to celebrate your birthday properly," Monica finished, smiling widely and clapping her hands.

The lights were doused, as if by magic, and the doors burst open. Spinelli was a little overwhelmed at the sight and sound of the small group of people that walked into the room singing a festive birthday song and toting an assortment of gifts, balloons, and small baubles. The throng was headed by Milo and Max who had great big smiles on their faces.

Maxie held a cake before her. It was lit by a multitude of candles that made her eyes sparkle. Spinelli turned away to look at Stone Cold who raised their entwined hands and kissed the back of Spinelli's.

"I'm sorry I forgot, Spinelli," Stone Cold said. "Never again," he promised, lowering their hands.

There were balloons and gifts, streamers and party hats, and through it all, Stone Cold held his hand, helped him breathe through the mild panic attacks that he had throughout the course of the short party as memories from their captivity resurfaced. Though it was short and there were only a few people present, it was a party the likes of which Spinelli had never experienced before, even as a child.

Spinelli blinked back tears when Stone Cold handed him one final gift, after almost everyone had left. Monica had stayed behind, presumably to keep an eye on the two of them, and make sure that the party hadn't set either of them back in their recovery. She was quiet and unobtrusive, busying herself with cleaning up after the party guests.

It felt like it was just the two of them once more, like it had been when they'd been in the cell with only each other to rely upon. Except this time Spinelli wasn't terrified that someone would walk in and pull them apart. That they'd be separated and one of them would be left worried that the other would never return, or would return more broken than he'd been when he'd left.

"It's not much," Stone Cold said apologetically when Spinelli turned the small package over in his hand.

It was the smallest gift that Spinelli had received, and was simply wrapped in a brown paper bag secured with twine. He loved it for its simplicity, because it was classic Stone Cold. He almost didn't want to open it, not because he was afraid of what it held, but because he didn't want to ruin the wrapping.

"It's okay if you don't want it," Jason said, reaching for it.

Spinelli pulled it away with a frown, and batted at Stone Cold's hand.

"I'll just take a picture of it," Monica said, winking at Spinelli who smiled, and motioned for Stone Cold to get into the picture.

Once the picture was taken, Spinelli ran his fingers over the paper, almost gingerly. They were scratched up from his desperate crawl through the forest, but that wasn't why he was being so careful. He was trying to draw this moment out for as long as he could, because it was the first present Stone Cold had ever wrapped and given to him.

"I can –" Stone Cold reached for the package once more, and Spinelli ran his finger beneath the twine, pulling it over a corner of the box so that he could take the paper off. He let the twine fall free and then took his time removing the paper, not wanting to tear it, in spite of the fact that it was just a scrap from a brown paper bag.

Stone Cold made an impatient sound when Spinelli folded the paper into a square and placed it on top of the fallen twine. He knew he was bordering on being dramatic, but he wanted to show Stone Cold how much he valued the thought that went behind the gift as much as the gift itself.

"If you –"

Spinelli placed a finger on Stone Cold's lips to silence the man and removed the top from the square box with a hand that shook a little too much. He took a deep breath before looking at what lay upon the white tissue paper, and then broke out into a wide smile, brows going up to his forehead in question, making sure that Stone Cold really meant it.

"It's yours, Spinelli," he said, voice low and husky, eyes searching out Spinelli's. "If you want it."

Spinelli plucked the key from the bed of tissue paper and nodded. It was the key to Stone Cold's new apartment, something that Spinelli hadn't ever thought that he'd be given. He'd thought that his days living at Casa de Stone Cold were long gone.

He placed the key back in the box, and replaced the top. He leaned over the bed's railing and pulled Stone Cold in for a hug that the man didn't push away from, but returned.

The sound of a door opening and closing indicated that they were completely alone.

"I'm sorry for everything that happened," Stone Cold whispered against his ear. "I didn't mean what I'd told Magnam when I said that I didn't know you. I was..."

"You were trying to keep me safe," Spinelli whispered; his throat hurting from the effort of speaking.

"I was," Stone Cold said, still holding him. "And, if you give me another chance, I always will."

Spinelli nodded, and they broke off the hug, both of them tired, in spite of the fact that the party hadn't even lasted for an hour.

"You should get some rest," Stone Cold said.

'You too,' Spinelli mouthed.

Stone Cold settled in his own bed with a sigh. It felt awkward to be so far apart when they'd spent nearly a month wrapped in each others' arms. Turning so that he could face Stone Cold, Spinelli tucked the box holding the key beneath his pillow. With Stone Cold in his line of vision, he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, knowing that, come morning, Stone Cold would still be there. His life was no longer hanging in the balance, and neither was Spinelli's.


End file.
